The people behind it say: “We think toy shops should stop categorising toys by gender because it limits children’s choices and imaginations.”

This is, dare I say it, a gender equality campaign for children which is the sort of phrase that makes me think of do-gooders in open-toed sandals with nothing better to occupy their minds.

But do they have a point?

Harrods have already apologised for stocking books entitled How To Be Gorgeous for girls and How To Be Clever for boys but that was just poor marketing. Both books should have been aimed at girls. They are usually far cleverer than boys.

Boots have agreed to remove signs differentiating toys for boys and girls. From now on, boys will be able to check out a pink Hotpoint toy cooker without shame.

Tesco have so far resisted calls to change their attitude which, they say, is based on customer response.

Apparently they still describe a chemistry set as being for boys – although they have agreed to review their categorisation.

Does it matter?

When I was growing up choice of toys was far more limited. I was always football mad but at the age of six or seven I also had a doll which was (depending on your psychiatrist) slightly better than an imaginary friend. The doll was only played with inside the house. I was also always ready to play mummies and daddies with Valerie who lived three doors up because I fancied her. But, by heck, she could be bossy.

My other guilty secret was that as a 12-year-old I became a fan of Enid Blyton’s Faraway Tree comics which were not exactly macho. I would wait outside the market hall and send my mother inside to buy the latest.

Mind you, I soon moved on to Sexton Blake and, by the time I was 15, I was devouring Hank Janson. So dolls and Enid Blyton never did me any harm.

My two grandsons are totally different. Eight-year-old Lorcan doesn’t particularly like football. He can be a boisterous boy but prefers reading on his Kindle and playing the piano.

His six-year-old brother Ruairi likes toy guns and tractors. When scaffolding was put up outside the house when he was four he thought it was his very own Meccano set and climbed it. Repeatedly.

Toys are still advertised separately on the internet as being suitable for either boys and girls, although the categories are pretty much the same – bikes, arts and crafts, building sets cover both. About the only differences are action figures for boys with dolls and bath and beauty products for girls.

Is this gender conditioning or natural selection? Is it that men are warlike and women maternal?

Labelling sections of stores for boys or girls probably does put boys off checking out what’s on offer in the predominantly pink aisles, but I doubt if it deters girls going down the blue ones. In my experience they are far more independent.

I suppose I’m ambivalent about the Let Toys Be Toys campaign.

If you remove all the signs, boys and girls will probably make the same choices anyway. And, when they get older, girls mature. Men? They still buy boys’ toys, just proving that they never grow up.